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Ginevra looked up from the fancy bowl, saw how out of place it was in the dusty graveyard garden. “If only I had never left, Taddea. I could have still been here, and when the plague first arrived, Agnesa and I, together we could have found a way to save the sisters.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Ginevra. No matter what happened, you would not still be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you said it yourself: the only reason you came back is because of a letter from stupid Ludovico Acciaiuoli.”

“That wasn’t the only reason. I wanted to come back for...for myself. To clear my name and make amends and make a life here, again. Anyhow, he is dead now, and I was dead to him long ago.”

“You were not so dead to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there is something he left for you. Years ago. He said you never wrote him back, and he thought we might be in touch with you.”

“What is it? Let me see,” Ginevra said, too quickly.

Taddea rolled her eyes, but left the garden and returned shortly with a small leather case. Ginevra opened it. Inside was a gold brooch set with a honey-colored stone at the center—amber, frozen sap from the forests of the north. The amber was encircled in a pair of arms, with hands clasped. She turned it over, and saw an engraved dedication:

“‘Not my wife/But my life?’” said Taddea, reading over her shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Poor, dense Ludovico. So cruel in his kindness—he meant the jewel as a token of affection, this Ginevra understood. But to think this would be enough for her, to be a lonely secret while he lived his own lonely life at the side of another poor woman who undoubtedly would be lonely as well. She held the jewel out to Taddea.

“You take it. Sell it for the convent.”

“I will not. Sell it for yourself. You really think the inquisitor will pay you? He is a frail man. Even if you find the relics, he won’t live to fulfill his obligations.”

Ginevra put the jewel away in her purse, distraught. She must have misunderstood the smaragdus. What did it send her here for? To see someone she loved die? So she could be humiliated anew by an old love affair? She couldn’t stand to be at the house of her failures any longer.

“Taddea, I must go. Now. I have business to attend. Please, are you sure you won’t come with me?”

Taddea just shook her head. “Go, Ginevra. And help in your way. I will stay here, and help in mine. And if God allows us to survive this, we will both know we have done what is right.”

TWENTY-FOUR

THE BECCHINO

Morning, July 8th of 1348,

City of Florence

That same morning Lucia awoke late and famished. She went to the kitchen to find Ginevra, but was distracted by the eel pie her new friend had left on the kitchen table. She ate with relish, tasting each crumb and bit of eel jelly. She went to the open window with the pie in her hand, and looked out to greet the world with the true joy of one who almost had to leave it.

Joy immediately tempered at seeing the shrouded corpse of Antonella, lying stiff on the piazza. This saddened Lucia, who wished some dignity for her loyal employee. She decided she would see to it that she was properly buried before she went to give thanks for her salvation at the church of Santa Maria Novella. Lucia finished her pie, licking the crumbs from her fingers, dressed in her plainest green gown, and went outside to sit next to the body. It was here she sat when Ginevra came, returned from Sant’Elisabetta.

Lucia waved with a smile but saw something was wrong.

“Why are you sitting here next to this moldering body?” asked Ginevra by way of greeting.

“I’m waiting for the becchini, the gravediggers, to make their rounds.”

“Ah, of course. I’m sorry she’s still here. I thought the city would pick her up.”

“Perhaps they will, eventually. But I’ll need to be here and pay them, or they’ll just dump her in a ditch around the corner.”

“It is hard now to find places...”

“It’s not just that. These becchini are terrible men. They are lowborn and charge exorbitant sums, and they sing frightening songs to mock our sorrow. Awful tunes, heard even through our shut windows.” She adjusted the shroud that had fallen away from her maid’s hand with its blackening fingertips.